| | | | Kim Just Sent a Very Clear Message to Trump | | North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's meeting with Xi Jinping has sent a very clear message to President Trump ahead of proposed talks, David Tweed writes for Bloomberg: China is back on our side.
"The surprise, highly secretive four-day trip ends a period of frosty ties between the longtime allies as China backed increasingly tough economic sanctions against North Korea over its nuclear and missile programs," Tweed writes.
"The shift ensures that China's interests are protected during Kim's planned summit with Trump, and also gives North Korea an insurance policy if talks collapse. While the White House said the Kim-Xi summit showed that its pressure campaign was working, closer China ties would help North Korea undermine sanctions and raise the cost of any US military action even further."
"The meeting also gives China more leverage as Xi faces a potential trade war with Trump. Earlier this month, the US president signed [a measure] allowing high-level diplomatic visits to Taiwan, a move that risks inflaming tensions with China." - Maybe Kim really has had a change of heart...Kim now appears secure at home. That could mean more baby steps toward reform, Pete Sweeney writes for Reuters.
"He has already tolerated, even encouraged, a degree of economic liberalization since taking power. Markets for household goods have developed, and central planning has weakened. Ration coupons have gradually been replaced by cash, including hard currency. Seoul reckons the Hermit Kingdom's economic growth hit 3.9 percent in 2016, a 17-year high, despite sanctions. The softening is partly an acceptance of reality. Kim can no longer blind his people -- who are poor but literate -- to China's development, nor explain away South Korea's wealth," Sweeney says.
"Kim also held a party congress in 2016, the first since 1980. That suggests he could be prepared to let the system evolve into a garden-variety Stalinist government. That would be a step-up from the current cult-like regime, enabling more rational policy." "Some international forces have been attempting to obstruct and undermine China-North Korea relations. They affix a variety of labels to the friendship between Beijing and Pyongyang, and spread rumors that distort bilateral relations. However, the deep roots of the China-North Korea relationship are solid beyond their imagination. The Xi-Kim meeting will renew their understanding of the bilateral relationship,' the paper editorializes. - Not so fast. The Korea Herald, in contrast, warns in an editorial: "[I]f Beijing rushes to restore diplomatic, security and economic assistance to the North for the sake of their alliance or its regional hegemony, the process will likely go up in smoke. In this context, the Kim-Xi summit arouses concern of a confrontation between South Korea, the US and Japan on one side and North Korea, China and Russia on the other."
| | The Shine's Coming Off Canada's Best and Brightest System | | Canada's points-based approach to immigration has earned plaudits from some US lawmakers – and President Trump – as they look to revamp America's system. What could go wrong with picking the "best and brightest"? Ask Canada's agriculture and food service industries, suggests Sara Schaefer Muñoz in the Wall Street Journal.
"While Canada has minimal illegal immigration, its model for legal immigration favors applicants with education, work experience and language proficiency. Some employers and economists say that system yields few workers to fill blue-collar or lower-skilled positions," Muñoz says.
"Proponents of Canada's merit-based model, which lets in about 300,000 new permanent residents a year, say it encourages those who will contribute to the economy by finding jobs or starting businesses, limiting burdens on social services. Polls have shown that Canadians generally feel immigration is positive for the economy."
But "many Canadian employers say Canada's system leaves them struggling to fill positions for farm workers, truck drivers and food-service personnel. In the US, too, companies already fret that tighter immigration could lead to further shortages in sectors like food and construction." | | A Space Lab Is Tumbling to Earth. Don't Worry! | | | A Chinese space lab is tumbling to Earth, and will likely re-enter the atmosphere sometime this weekend. The European Space Agency said Wednesday that it's impossible to know exactly when or where it will hit. So, how worried should we be? Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist working at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, emails Global Briefing that we probably shouldn't be too concerned, about this lab, at least.
"This has attracted a lot of attention, but the chance of the debris from Tiangong-1 hitting anyone, or causing property damage, is tiny. Something as big as Tiangong-1 – which is about 8 metric tons -- comes down about once a year. And this is only about 10 percent of the mass of the US Skylab space station, which famously reentered over Australia in 1979," McDowell says.
Still, he warns, this is a reminder of a very real challenge posed by the proliferation of space junk.
"We're not excessively worried about space junk that hits the Earth. Out in space, however, more and more junk is out there – in fact, almost 19,000 objects are currently being tracked. Only about 2,000 of these are working satellites, and almost half of them are commercially owned. So, what's really worrying space engineers is a chain reaction with collisions between satellites causing more and more debris, eventually making space unusable -- and destroying the Earth orbital economy in the process." | | Recent protests in Iran suggest the country's citizens are growing weary of the Islamic Republic. But what's largely overlooked is that many in the country are also "disenchanted with Islam itself," writes Mustafa Akyol in The New York Times. And it's not just Iranians.
"Authoritarianism, violence, bigotry and patriarchy in the name of Islam are alienating people in almost every Muslim-majority nation. On Twitter, a campaign titled #ExMuslimBecause lists plenty of such reasons — for example, the despotism of the Saudi religion police, the attacks on secular bloggers in Bangladesh, the demonization of gay people in Malaysia," Akyol says.
"The core problem is that traditional Islamic jurisprudence, and the religious culture it produced, were formed when society was patriarchal, hierarchical and communitarian. Liberal values like free speech, open debate and individual freedom were much more limited."
"Modern society, however, is a very different place. People are more individualistic and questioning, and have much more access to diverse views. Questions cannot be answered by platitudes, and ideas cannot be shut down by crude dictates. And those who insist in doing so will only push more people away from the faith they claim to serve."
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